{ } = word or expression can't be understood
{word} = hard to understand, might be this

I have pondered time and again how to proceed at this moment. I want to s- -- tell you that all times that can be experienced are social times, that the individual is unable to be the bearer of the experience of times. You and I, left alone, cannot really experience time. And since we have lived in the last 50 years in this strange abstraction about time--which is represented by the -- A-bomb, and the H-bomb, and the doctrine of relativity, and all these attempts of physicists to tell us what time is, as an abstraction--you cannot be surprised that we live in a situation, gentlemen, in which no experience of history has been made. This country has not yet learned the experience of two world wars. Neither has Europe. The French are still quibbling over a German general in the Atlantic alliance. The fact that Europe can only live as a unity is not even now digested and palatable to the various countries in Europe.

That is to say, 50 years of world war and world destruction have not sufficed to make an experience. As you know, the -- Winston Churchill has called the whole Second World War "the unnecessary war." It was only necessary, because people declined to make an experience. Everything that we -- you allegedly have learned now in the Second World War was all already experienceable in 1918. It took 30 -- more years before it was clear, gentlemen, that one generation which lives by its own devices cannot make an experience. You can only make an experience if three generations make the same experience.

To give you an example, gentlemen, of a very practical nature: in France in the '20s, there appeared a book with the motto, written by a young Frenchman, La Guerre, Ce Sont Nos PŠres. "The World War I? That's the business of our parents. We have forgotten it." So obviously, 10 years later this poor boy had to go to war a second time, because it hadn't been his war. He had not identified himself with the experience of the people of the First World War.

19- -- gentlemen, in 1940, my colleague, Mr. {Bartlett} -- {Donald Bartlett} here gave a paper to write on St. Augustine. And a boy wrote the following stunning introduction: "Here I am, a senior in Dartmouth College, in the year of the Lord 1940. And I consider that the seniors of 1917 were real apes and asses, because they were talked into going to war. And so I feel rather superior; cannot happen to me, to be taken in, in this manner. Now since I look down on the people of 1917, what shall I feel about the bishop, St. Augustine, who lived in 428 of our era? That's too long ago to interest me."

That's, by and large, gentlemen, your relation to time. You wouldn't so cr- -- you wouldn't put it so crudely, perhaps, but if you analyze what you have {in}

your mind about the effect of time on you, and you -- of you on time, I think you would all side with the Dartmouth student and with the French student, La Guerre? Ce Sont Nos PŠres. And the other: "The seniors of 1917, they were taken in; they didn't have the information. But we are enlightened. We have the GI course, so -- but you can't have { }."

Well, isn't this quite serious, gentlemen? The result for this poor senior in his paper in 1940 was of course: at a year later, he was in uniform, you see. Because Santayana, the great Harvard writer, has said a very simple word: "Those who do not remember the past are forced to repeat it." Those who do not repeat -- remember the past are compelled to repeat it. I do not know -- the wording is, I think, opposite: "If you remember the past, you don't have to repeat it." But my meaning, I mean, is -- is legitimate.

So gentlemen, will you take this down? One generation or one class of men is unable to make an experience of history, because it has no relation to a previous situation against which it comes in conflict--represented by your -- for example, your fathers--and it has no relation to the future--represented by your unborn grandchildren--to which you turn in order to understand.

I had lunch the other day with a boy, who has the great for- -- good fortune to be in a firm of his -- in his family who has -- which has been in his family for four generations. And he told me a -- a very wonderful thing about this firm, that he was in an enterprise which could not grow just from bank credit or from customers' orders, but only if the people who worked for them were available. And that took time. And that therefore it was a very slow process of expansion. And they had always to consider, in every decision this family enterprise had to make, the next 15 years or 20 years. Nothing could be done on the spur of the moment. They had to see what this would then this involve in 20 years. It's a big factory, a big -- place. And everything is different because they think in terms of generations. And you think in terms of moments, gentlemen. And if you think in terms of generations, you don't have to go to war twice for the same issue. The Second World War can only happen to a bunch of individuals who have no relation to their parents and say, "The -- the war? That's my father's idiocy," you see. Or "The war? That's the seniors of 1917."

So it's very practical, gentlemen, to know one thing, gentlemen: no one generation can experience time, real time. You can only think by yourself--physics -- -icists' time. But that's playing.

Well I -- have now the task, gentlemen, to convince you that all time in history, which we experience--or in politics--is common time and established time. That is, it is, when you wish, manmade time. And all time we know of--and

we are living inside of--is established by human sacrifice, and by human doings, and by human obedience, and by human loyalty. There is no time per se.

This is a big order, and I wish to begin therefore with a concrete example. And I -- I don't feel that my method is the best one; I have to try. Because it is something you can hardly under- -- expected to understand. You are products of the scientific age, and therefore you only have heard of these two abstractions, of the split-second out of which all time is composed, and of the sum of all the splitseconds, which you call with a -- quite a wrong expression, "eternity." All-time eternity, the -- the smallest unit of time, a split-second, everything in between just -- compounds of these split seconds.

Now real time, of course, looks like this. These are arcades of time, gentlemen. And we stand at this moment, you here in this college--I've tried to show you this in these four years in such a way that when your parents come up to commencement, that's the last time you can expect your parents to be half responsible for your upkeep. And it is also--commencement--the first day which you very well know that from now on, everything will not be done class-wide, but in a personal way, you see. You cannot say, "Oh, I'm just one of the fellows," you see, from that day on. You aren't. You are now yourself.

So arcades of time say, gentlemen, that it is easier to understand four years, and your behavior in these four years is more readily understandable to you and to me--than any one behavior in one split-second. Your behavior is not composed of four times 365 days, you see. But it stretches as a common behavior over four years, out. And then I can understand most of your daily activities from when I understand the whole situation of the time. Four years are more easily understood, gentlemen, than a minute. And this goes on, gentlemen. The whole history of mankind is more easily understood than any one year. And a -- a day is even more difficult to understand. That can be cloudy, that can have a fallout, you -- so to speak, you see, there can be very -- much of a riddle. You think the other way around. You think that the day can be easily understood, and the world history cannot be understood. Now I tell you, big epochs are more readily understood than small moments.

The Renaissance can be easily understood, the Reformation. Everybody knows what the Reformation is all about. You know what the Middle Ages are about. You know what Jeffersonian democracy is all about. That's easily understood. But what happened December 7th, 1832, over this we can struggle and quarrel very much, you see; that's very doubtful. But that Jefferson gave the stamp of democracy to this country, that's quite true, you see. And that the 16th century was the century of discoveries, that's absolutely self-evident, gentlemen. However, when Peru was discovered you can quibble, you see. Not quite sure

what -- on which day the thing happened.

So the small events, gentlemen, are more difficult to know than the big events. That's all against your grain.

Now, come by a concrete example, gentlemen, of the fact that all times are established. As you know, we have a -- -- a ye- -- year of 52 Sundays. And where there is a Christian Church, one of these Sundays is distinguishable as Easter. And it seems to you that there are -- is first the year of 52 weeks. And then there is one Easter. That's not the meaning of the year we have. It is -- the meaning is today lost. Even many so-called clergymen have lost this meaning. But the true story of Easter, which is one of great struggle and great difficulties of the first 600 years, people struggled over Easter to such an extent that Mohammed came along in 622 and his Islam, his heresy, only brought the Easter struggle to an end. There is a connection between the Islam -- the Moslem era and our Easter Day.

For 600 years, it was a problem, gentlemen: how to find one's own place in time, how? Easter is the only certain day for a Christian by which he looks back to pre-Christian era, of Jews and Gentiles, and he looks forward to a time when there will be neither Greek nor Jew. So the birth -- the Crucifixion -- and the Resurrection is the only event that matters. The all -- other 52 Sundays are perfectly { } in themselves. They are imitations of Easter, as a matter of fact. And that's the point I wish to make, gentlemen. In the whole Church year, gentlemen, the only real event that was studied with great concern by the fathers of the Church--when it should be celebrated, when the new moon, and when the spring equinox, and that it was this conjunction that we could repeat the day of the Crucifixion in good conscience--this was the only holiday in the whole year that was necessary to recognize the Christian congregation as in existence, the Church as having gathered around this event. The other 52 Sundays, gentlemen--now look -- listen well--are imitations of Easter. Easter is not one Sunday out of 52. But 51 Sundays imitate this one event. And it is to be understood, gentlemen, that this Easter landmark, up here, is on the highest mountain top. And the man -- people stream from all over the world to the site of this great one event. And then it flattens out on a lower level into these 51 other Sundays who are like the stateholders, the lieutenants--"lieutenant" meaning the {in loco tenante}, the -- how do you say this in English?--the "placeholder" would be the -- the literal translation, you see, the substitute for the captain holiday. Easter is the captain, and the other Sundays are the lieutenants.

Now you have of course lost the meaning of the word "lieutenant." But "lieutenant" just means somebody who serves in place of the captain when the captain is absent. That's the whole meaning of a lieutenant, you see.

We -- "ten-" -- "tenir" in French is ho- -- to hold; and "lieu" means place, you see. And a lieutenant holds the place of his captain, because this poor captain is married and has to go home sometimes.

Very important, gentlemen. You build up also the army in this wrong way, that you go from staff sergeant up to lieutenant and to captain. You cannot understand the army if you do not see that a brigadier and a lieutenant -- lieutenant colonel, and a lieutenant in the company are to be considered from the top down. The lieutenant colonel is somebody who is, among the majors, entitled to take the place of the colonel. But the colonel is the real man who is needed to command a regiment. That's normal, you see, that a regiment is commanded by a colonel. So you have to have a lieutenant colonel, or two lieutenant colonels in the regiment, you see, who can take eventually the place of the colonel. But you in your physicists' way of thinking -- naturalistic way of thinking, you count up from the bottom and you come to the result, that after the major, there is the lieutenant colonel, and then comes the colonel. It's ut- -- utterly mistaken. You can only understand the name "lieutenant colonel" when you look down from the colonelcy. Can you see this?

The same you must look at Easter and the Sunday, gentlemen. You must look down from Easter to the -- each Sunday and say, "On this Sunday, we imitate Easter in a small way." That's why there is -- a creed is said, for example; and you may have Communion; and Mass is said in the Catholic Church--as though it was Easter. If you want to know what the real Mass service is, you have to go to the celebration of the Great Saturday in the Catholic Church, or of the Great Week, as it is called, from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. There is the standard for all the rest of the year. The seven days of the week between Palm Sunday and Easter to this day in the -- Catholic Church explain why all the other Sundays are shorthand, abbreviations, little -- little imitations of the full-fledged, grown holiday of Easter.

Therefore, gentlemen, the holiday enables us to have a time sense. Without the holiday, there is no time experience. The other days are placed to remind us of the recurrence of this holiday over a whole year. Fifty-one Sundays, we are waiting for the return of Sun- -- of Easter. Or we are encouraged, you also can say, to hold onto our already-made experience of Easter. This Sunday service is on-...

[tape interruption] see. But at Easter, we are challenged to decide which place we take at the foot of the Cross. Are we one of the Roman soldiers? Are we one of Jewish rabbis? Are we Pontius Pilate? Are we Peter, Judas, or who-not? And it is a de- --

the -- the sword decided at Easter: who we are. Where do we stand? Before Christ, after Christ, without Christ, with Christ, for Christ, against Him? All this is the Easter service, the imposition of the Easter service. Most of you of course are just as much asleep on Easter Sunday as on Sunday -- the weekday, the -- the ordinary Sunday. But that's not the fault of the calendar, gentlemen. The -- the calendar says that at one time, one event had to be put up so high that it began to organize our weeks, that it began now to make sense that we should have 51 explicit remembrances of Sunday, and that they would shed their light on the following week. As you know, Easter is the reversal of all values of the old Israel, because in the old Israel, the Sabbath was the last day of the week, whereas at Easter, the Sunday becomes the first day of the week. And you go back to your work illuminated, and enlightened, and inspired by what you have been made to co-suffer on Sunday. And therefore, the light falls upon the following week. Sunday is not a rest day, gentlemen, but it is a seed day, and the week is the harvest day -- the harvest time. Everything is in reverse.

Therefore, gentlemen, if you -- we hadn't the Easter Sunday, we would still all be Romans or Jews. We would have a calendar of astrology with ten days, like these chambers of commerce now want to have it, you see. A holiday -- our schoolchildren have these mechani- -- mechanized calendars now, eight weeks' vacation -- no, pardon me, 10 days' vacation and eight -- eight weeks' school. And we live today in great danger of going back to pre-Christian calendars. It is rampant here. And there are two pre-Christian calendars, as we shall see more extensively later, who organize time. One, in the narrow path of 365 days, you have units of 10 or units of 30, like the month. Or like these schoolchildren -- eight weeks and 10 days; you think nothing of this mechanization. You think that's your -- you can do this. Gentlemen, {there is} great danger, because the children think then in terms of bricks of time. They really think that the eight -- days of this -- eight weeks together make eight weeks. They do not understand that eight weeks are part of a year. And I think the destruction of the time-sense of our children has progressed in such a terrible way already that this is the ultimate; it destroys every relation of these children to their own lifetime, and to the life of humanity. If you do not count the 1957 years of our era, you destroy the sense of our being in -- within the history of all mankind. And if you destroy -- the unity of the solar year, from Easter to Easter, then you obv- -- obviously destroy the power of these little children, who are without -- chime-sen- -- timesense alre- -- already, you see, who are mythical, who think that time is just a sequence of happy days, who -- you dis- -- educate them never to recognize the special quality of a year, of a decade, or of 30 years, or of a lifetime. And that's why we have children instead of citizens.

All this is done -- in the name of -- of naturalistic theory of education. Man is an animal, and has to be fragmented, as he has been fragmented into nice

beds, and couches, and stables the horses have, so -- and cows. Every stall -- how -- cow, there's a wonderful--how do you call such a place for one cow in -- in a barn?



(One stall.)

Stall, obviously. Quite. So we have stalls of time today for the children.

To give you some help about the -- about this creation of a yardstick for time. Nobody is a Christian, gentlemen, who hasn't heard of Easter. But everybody can be a Christian although he doesn't go to any Sunday service. That's obvious. Both things are true. Because Easter is giving the sense of time that we live after Christ. Anybody who says he doesn't live after Christ--"Christ hasn't come, yet"--is either a Jew or a pagan. A Christian is a man who says, "Christ has come before me. The perfect man has already lived, and I only have to follow His example." That's the simple division between Easter people and non-Easter people. That's all. The -- more distinction there isn't, gentlemen. There's nothing else between -- you and people of antiquity, that either you know that already the perfect man has lived before you, or you say, "No, there is no perfect man. And I may be just as well the perfect man as anybody else." Then you are in antiquity, in Egyptian darkness.

So the -- but the Sundays are a very minor matter, because, gentlemen, this one event gives the mas- -- measure of time. And all the other times are measured by this event. So the -- we have to distinguish between measuring events and measured events. And what I called the fact that time is established, which we can experience, means that all times can be dis- -- divided into two characters. One time is characterized by its power to measure other times. And the other times are measured by this event. There is a tension between Easter and the 36- -- -3 other days of the year.

I said to you the same thing alr- -- already about the Olympic Games. And I t- -- call- -- told you that the Greeks felt that after four years, the whole Heaven was represented in this event as returning into its eternal order, and its eternal recurrence. I told you why: because four times 365 days represented four times 365 years in the sky. And so man tried in the Olympic Games to celebrate the con- -- reconciliation of Heaven and earth. Heaven speaks and earth obeys, as a great Indian play in Guatemala says.

"Heaven speaks and earth obeys." That's the symbol of the Olympic

Games. Anybody who bows to the authority of the Olympic Games, anybody who gives safe conduct to any Greek who comes once to participate in these games, and they did give -- these tyrants of the various territories gave safe conduct to anybody who wanted to come to Olympia. They couldn't arrest a man, you see, { }. They bowed to this celestial order, and the Olympic Games then were the extraordinary event by which all ordinary events are measured.

Today it's February 25th, gentlemen, to give you another example of a yardstick time, a time which give time to other times. On February 25th, gentlemen, in Rome, there broke out the so-called collapse of the kingdom, the {regi pubium}. As a matter of fact, it broke out on the eve of the 25th, yesterday evening. And -- is it 26th today, or 25th?


Well, I understand I'm off of one day. But it -- the period, gentlemen, during which in Rome the year collapsed -- comprised five full days, during which one expected the return of the normal course of the year. The original time-reckoning, gentlemen, of the ancients was this way -- or five plus 365 is more correct. Five days to gather the people around the time-measuring event. Let's say, Easter. As you know, the whole Easter week was spent on getting steam up: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Great Saturday, and Easter Sunday, are all needed. And in other countries, even Easter Monday is used to it -- for it. And in the -- similar manner, it has something to do with each other. And in a similar manner in Rome, on February 24, the king of Rome had to flee from the city in great panic, because Heaven and earth were collapsing. The order of the year was over. And he went into hiding. And he -- there was an interregnum. You know, the word "interregnum" is a very -- you have inherited this word in your language. What an interregnum is, you know. It's a time in between. You don't know what an interregnum is? Oh, Sir. Between two rules, the time, you see. Interregnum. And this interregnum was of five days. And they had even an interrex. The oldest senator of the senate of Rome was, so to speak, for the time being the -- again, the lieutenant. In the absence of the real king. And this -- in this interregnum, gentlemen, all the forces of evil were raging over the city, and inflaming the citizens for a nor- -- new loyalty. To ask the king back on March 1st, the new rule set in again, for 360 days, which were then divided in 10 times 36 days, and the old word for a month has nothing to do with the moon in Rome. It's called "menses," as you may know, and you have -- know the -- the word "menses," and "semester," and "trimester." That all has to do with measurement. And the year was measured beginning from March 1st, ending on March -- on February 24th, and then in between, there was this five-time interregnum, the 24, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th. That's one of the reasons why February has only 28 days to this day, because the preparation for March the 1st -- had to be made in these

five old, ancient days of -- at the end of February. And in fact, they had no name, these five days. They were not, as we call them today--because we don't share this old calendar, we have the Easter calendar instead--we don't share the superstition that these five days were days of destruction, and disorder, and terror. And so we give them the harmless name of February 25th, or February 26th. By which we have, so to speak, given them a legal status, within the year. That was quite -- { } from the ancients, gentlemen.

When Julius Caesar, you see, goes through the last weeks of his life in Julius Caesar, by Shakespeare, the times are haunted by all kind of mishaps. Anybody who has read Shakespeare knows that Calpurnia, Caesar's wife, warns him against all the terrors, you see, that are -- abound at that moment. And the collapse of the times is upon the -- Rome again, in the last days of Caesar's life. And it's only a little delayed. He's killed, as you know, on March 15th then, a fortnight later. He doesn't make the New Year, so to speak.

What I'm driving at is, gentlemen, that to this day, February 24th has a distinction: that after it, the Leap Day is placed. We have February 29th { } in a Leap Year. That's not quite true. The Leap Day, according to the old tradition of mankind, goes in between February 24 and February 25th. And then of course the result is that these five days are, you see, getting up to one day more, to six days. And so you get to now count -- modern count: February 29th.

You can recognize the Leap Day still in the Church calendar when you read the name of the Apostle Matthias. Matthias is the 13th Apostle who had to be elected in place of poor Judas. When Judas took his life, they -- other Apostles got together and appointed a 13th Apostle in, you see, called Matthias. Now Matthias is the leap Apostle. And just as the Leap Day is a -- extraordinary day in the year--every four years--in the same sense, the 13th Apostle of course is an irregular Apostle. And so he was placed on the day of Matthias, 24th. He's one like -- one of these unfortunate children here born on February 29th, and have their birthday only every four years.

You may laugh at these -- old traditions of the human race, which are just barely still recognizable from the calendar -- your calendar as of today. I think the importance, which you should realize again, is that our orientation in time can get lost. That is, we can suddenly fall out of this system of relationships and cross-references. We have, in the Islamic era, an era which is at cross-purposes with ours. They count, as you know, of -- in -- after 622; and it's very difficult to compare the dates between any event in Islam and in our own time. Very clumsy and very difficult. The Russians had fallen behind with -- in our calendar about 10 days, so they speak of the October Revolution, in -- for -- as the beginning of their Communistic era; whereas to us, it was in November, you see.

The important thing about all these eras is, gentlemen, that they had to be established. You know of an established Church. But you have never considered that all calendars are exactly as churches, established calendars. It took, as I told you, 600 years before people decided to count their years from the coming of Christ. And it took Mr. Hitler to abolish the Christian era. He made a desperate attempt to get Christ out of our way of reckoning. That should make you sit up when such a man, such a despot, feels that he's threatened. As long as the name of Christ is mentioned in re- -- relation to the time in which Mr. Hitler governs, you can immediately see that it is of tremendous importance to his governing. And it has great political significance, whether we live in the Christian era or not.

In the last 50 years, by and large, with the help of Mr. Einstein, and Mr. Planck, Mr. Grave- -- Groves, and--what's the general of the Al- -- Alamo project?--and all these nice physicists, all the Nobel Prize winners, we have nearly abolished the Christian era. People laugh at it. I have myself, in my own home- -- village, there has been a -- a lecturer 15 years ago who said, "We now know that it was nothing with the Christian era; that's all over. Let's forget about it. We are entering now the new Dark Ages." He knew it all. And he wanted it this way, obviously.

You can abolish your or- -- sense of orientation in time. And it is done today. We have this situation: the people of -- of moment and eternity--the physicists--tell us that all established times and eras are arbitrary. Because it's manmade. Now I don't know if you consider your own existence and the marriage of your parents arbitrary. I think it is necessary. Any human being who looks back at his own origins will find that it was necessary that things happened this way so that he could be the fruit of this. And I believe, gentlemen, that the established times are more necessary than the physicists' times. They are not arbitrary. But that's the battle which we have now to fight for the rest of this course, gentlemen: is a time, because it is manmade, arbitrary? Or can ma- -- man not discover the necessary steps which ennoble his task as the further creation of the universe? Is God arbitrary when He creates the clouds? Or is -- is He doing that which is necessary for the salvation of His creation? Isn't every step in creation necessary? Isn't the next animal a necessary progress? Our physicists tell us that everything man does is arbitrary. I would suggest that what the physicists do may be arbitrary. What I do is not arbitrary -- if I can help it. I'm not doing anything arbitrary in my life, or I go to hell. Hell is arbitrariness, gentlemen; and Heaven is necessity. That's salvation. A man is a saint who does that which is at -- in his day and time necessary.

And therefore gentlemen, either our times can be sanctified and can be justified as eras and time-reckonings which are necessary, or we are all not able to ex- -- know anything about the times in -- where we live. We live then all in a

fairy tale, "Once upon a time."

The question then is, gentlemen: have an- -- all of the eras which have been created in history--the Jewish era, the Islam era, the Christian era itself--have they been created for a necessary reason? And which is this reason? The reason is that people who have not their time together cannot have peace together. To make -- establish a common time, gentlemen, is a way of creating the basis for a common peace. You cannot have peace without the same time. If people live in another time, they have nothing in common with the people who live in my time, and vice versa. Why? When we go on the street, gentlemen, and you meet a man, the first thing you have to do is, "Nice morning," isn't it? You bid him the same time. That's a very profound necessity, gentlemen, of exchanging any human speech with another man is that you make sure that you live in the same -- in the face of the same time moment. That you realize it's a nice day, or it's "Good evening," or it's "Good night."

You laugh at all these things, and you think that's arbitrary. You have lost all respect, gentlemen, for the oldest traditions of mankind. Their experience, since 10,000 years, that only those people are friendly to each other and have peace with each other who can bid each other the same time. It is not arbitrary. It is arbitrary that you say "Hello." That's perfectly arbitrary. And that you say, "Hi," because you are of course rumps, mutilated people. You cannot say anything more with any meaning. You only remember that something should be said and you put such a raucous cough in the place of "Good evening." You say, "Hi," and you like that, because it's informal. But you destroy the peace of mankind by this attitude, because you have nothing to offer to this other fellow, on -- no bridge. You don't build any bridge into his time-sense. But you -- of course, you can afford this. You live in such a peaceful society at-large, that you think it doesn't -- you don't have to do anything to restore time. You live in a mythical time, after all, and you wish it this way. The who- -- the only time you know is the time of the games -- of the basketball game.

Your calendar is a sport calendar. All the other calendars have absolutely no influence on your actions. Only as stumbling blocks, I mean. You can't cut all the classes you would like to -- cut, so they -- they are, so to speak, preventive measures of -- on our part against your sense that the only important event is tomorrow at 7 o'clock in the evening. Who has a ticket? Only so few? Yes. Who has a ticket for the basketball game tomorrow { }? Well, gentlemen. { } come nearer to the truth.

Gentlemen, if the common time is the condition for having peace, then obviously the struggle for a common era is not a wanton one. For then is necessary to enlarge the circle of people and of -- and eras who are held together by

one time -- by one time-reckoning. So the march of times -- of time is really the expansion of one calendar, of -- ref- -- of reference to more and more people. You can write the history of the -- of Christianity, or of a world religion, or -- and world peace in terms of the expanse of the calendar, because in the calendar one event is made so important that all other events take second place. You can see this as a very simple question to the American people, you see: are the Americans human beings, or -- are -- one day have all Americans -- all human beings to be American? If all human beings one day have to be American, they would all have to celebrate the 4th of July and Thanksgiving, you see. If, however, you feel that is not necessary, that you can have peace with the other people, you see, without the 4th of July and Thanksgiving, you must look for some common star of Bethlehem to which the other nations can look up without having -- being forced to celebrate the 4th of July. So you are either imperialists who must conquer the rest of the world, you see, or you must have some relation--and in our stultification at this moment, as you know, they have tried to establish United Nations Day. It's a poor idea, you see. It's an artificial holiday. It's a manmade holiday, and not an established holiday.

And in this idea of having all these governor-called holidays today, you see the impoverishment of Americans. These governor-declared holidays are no holidays. They're just funny. Newspaper Week, and Library Week, and Smoking Week, and Tobacco Week, and so on. I wonder why they don't have a Birth Control Week.

It's a shame, gentlemen. It's a total abuse of the sacredness of the -- of the future, which you { } occupy as non-ex- -- not-experienced time. They're all thought out, gentlemen. A real calendar must lift up something that has really happened, and make it enter everybody's later -- every later -- -comer's heart. Easter is an event that actually happened. The whole problem is to -- to put you under Easter, under its impact. That's the genuine day in the calendar. Mother Day or Father Day is an invention of Macy's. -- That's a scandal. These are abstract holidays, just like the abstract time-sense, gentlemen.

You can only reform the world, gentlemen, by concrete events for which somebody has paid in sweat, toil, and blood. And tears. And this is totally forgotten. The abstract physicists' calen- -- character of time today is -- ref- -- reflected in your abundance of artificially made holidays, which nobody observes, and the complete lack of a -- the political holiday after the -- World War I, after World War II, and as I told you, even after the Civil War.

It's a -- of course a correlation, you see. If you have no concrete experiences in time, you -- you have to have something instead, so you make these -- these platitudinous holidays. The sooner you laugh out of court these Mother

Days and Father Days, gentlemen, the more this -- this country can so to speak, go through its molting, and -- and -- and get a clean skin. These are -- this is a skin disease, an eczema, these holidays, because the country cannot find expression for its real life under the scales and the dandruff of these holi- -- these artificial holidays. They are just jokes. But they are very bad jokes, and I assure you, gentlemen, as the skin must be clean in order to breathe, so the skin of a country cannot breathe really, if it is just -- all its pores are -- are -- are closed by these artificial proclamations of these so-called governors of states who have lost all right to call themselves "states." Little provincial curatoriums for lunatic asylums. And what do our states? They have lunatic asylums, schools, and roads. I don't know what the {common} denominator of the three things is, but that's what the -- they conduct. They conduct the affairs of the road commissioner, the affairs of the lunatics, and the affairs of the schoolchildren. What's the common denominator? Wie? I don't know. Perhaps we'll find out.

That's called a "state" today. The administration of the schools, of the highway, and of the insane asylum. Isn't that true? Have you ever been to -- to individual state? That's their budget. They cannot proclaim a holiday. But they do -- they do all the time.

A holiday -- can only proclaim after it has already been written into the hearts of the people. But they proclaim, you see, instead of proclaiming what already exists, they try to make them. This you cannot do by proclamation. They overdo the -- the term "proclamation" very largely.

So gentlemen, a holiday is a means of gathering people who otherwise would be scattered, and who otherwise would have no common relation to each other, and would not be obliged to be called back from their division of labor.

Take the holiday today, gentlemen. You have a manufacturer. It consists of a big corporation. Shareholders live somewhere between Florida and the Thousand Islands. And they are the owners. Nobody knows when they celebrate their Sunday, and where they go to church. Probably they don't go to church. The second group are the engineers. They live in some suburb that's not north of Chicago, but west. And then the workers, they live south of Chicago. And they go to their own little churches. And they have no common holiday. And so they are -- don't form a people. It is much more important that they all should go the stadium and see at least the common football game. When you can find the rich and the poor at the same game, they have a common holiday. It's not a very profound holiday. It's a very superficial -- it's just a game. But at least they are all together.

A holiday, gentlemen, is a day on which the division of labor--between

the sexes, and the ages, and the professions--is destroyed, or is reversed, and in which the parts--as I told you--are replaced by the whole. You remember my example of the water -- drop of water, or the pollution of this river, and the respect for water in general. And I said in baptism, we think that water is one of the sanctifying elements of life. And when we pollute the Connecticut River, as the Mary Hitchcock Clinic did for so many years, then we forget this, because it is only a part of our existence. We have divided the universe.

And so the same with the division of labor, gentlemen. If you are a manufacturer, and live in Florida, or in -- in the St. Lawrence River, then you forget that you are chained together with your workmen in a common fate, and in a common history, and you begin to have your own history.

Therefore, the common holiday is inevitable if you want to have a people. And I think I said this before: a people exist where there are common holidays. And where there are no common holidays, there are no people -- is no people. The condition of -- creating a people, of preserving the people, is that the people out of their being mothers, and virgins, and domestic servants, and slaves, and painters, and artists, and politicians, at one day prove to themselves that they are nothing of the kind, that they are just a people.

That's why the holiday, gentlemen, gives meaning to all the smaller units of time, to our weekdays. That's why the climax is Easter, where we all cease to be anything in our own right, where we are shown up in our miserable state. We have slain the Son of the all-highest. We all have. The Christ-killers, gentlemen, are very frequent among us. We are all Christ-killers occasionally, so at Easter, we say, "Yes, we have slain the righteous of the Lord, many times." You have poked fun at the best man in your midst. How often have you done this? Quite often.

You have in this moment, where you see this, that something higher has been killed by you, you forget your own status. And therefore, you suddenly throw down your mask of being a very important person, or very rich, or a very good athlete, or an excellent student, or a wonderful son of your mother--or whatever your tremendous qualification may be. It's all suddenly, you see, reduced to your nothingness, to your beginning from scratch, to your being at this moment a newborn child that has to find his way -- its way in the thicket of life, all over again. Nothing matters what has gone on before. Easter is the great divide between everything you have achieved so far and that what you have to achieve tomorrow. If it isn't this divide, you cannot celebrate Easter. If it is this divide, gentlemen, then you understand that the Sundays and the weekdays are two {terraces} which are only the consequences, the projections from this great climactic moment into your daily life over the whole span of your existence.

Every year may be Easter, but that isn't even necessary. One con- -- day of conversion, one day of insight in your whole life may take the place of Easter. I would not contest the fact that a man can, one moment in his life, discover the truth, where he stands, and who is the righteous of the Lord. And if he puts himself under this man's dictatorship and follows Him, that's enough. He has his Easter. And if he really can put his whole life--what went on before, and what is going to come hereafter--in -- into this -- into this position as being made over by the establishment of his one real holiday in his life, I would suggest that this man doesn't -- wouldn't have to go to Church at all. He has found his calendar for his whole life, because he has one day--and this is the important thing--by which he can measure all other days with regard to their achievement, or with regard to their failure.

If you could in your biography, gentlemen, have one such overwhelming date--perhaps a trip to Europe, or some summer vacation, or the day on which you got engaged, or for a girl, her wedding date--she just wouldn't know -- need any other day. -- But we are so forgetful that we have to be reminded of these great events in our life. So better, "Don't quote me," I do not advise you to live by this one great event of your self-revelation in your life, because you will get tired, and you will need some bracing by going through the motions of let's say, Easter or some other holiday. { }, you see. It is good to have Thanksgiving Day coming every year, so that you can show that you can be hospitable to the forgotten man.

[tape interruption] a very minor matter. So we have even above Easter, gentlemen, the real Easter. The one Easter in your own life. Easter, and then we have Easter Sunday, and then we have underneath all the 52 Sundays, and then we have all the 360, or what it is, weekdays. This is, by and large, the relation as a -- in a man's life. If you have any experience in life of a -- overwhelming character, the day in which it -- you suddenly say you had to become a doctor, or your suddenly see what life should be like, and what you should serve--which gods you should serve, and which you should not serve--that is the event by which you will measure every achievement of every one day in your life, will you not? And therefore any man can experience in his whole li- -- own life the difference between a holiday and a weekday. Only most of us are too weak ever to grow up to this simple--it is really very simple--stature of the moment of your own conversion. And -- especially for people who -- who are born as Christians and baptized in their childhood, they -- usually think that they don't have to be converted. And they -- of course they are the worst pagans, I mean.

Today the Church is the seat of all paganism in this country, because these people think they are Christians and have never done anything about it.

And they are horrors. They can't -- I mean, very rarely can they be helped, because they think they -- they -- they don't have to go through the depths and the heights of a { }, that there is one day which sheds light on the meaning of all the other days. They add the Sunday just to their weekday life, and therefore they are really hard to get. I mean, most -- people I think are only used as bricks so that there is a church to open, and other people can go to church. Most of my pious friends I always think are really very much like doormats. ja, they are. They want to be. They never admit that the Sunday makes them over, you see. But they feel very good that they are able, from their weekday status, to add the solemnity of Sunday, you see.

If you put Sunday just as a -- as an accrescence, as an ornament on the top of your weekdays, gentlemen, you have no orientation in time. The holiday is better not celebrated if you think that it is an addition, or an adornment, an embellishment of weekdays. It's very nice. We work hard six days a week, you see, and then one day we go off on a spree. That's not a holiday.

I have to insist, gentlemen, that every nation, and every class of man, and every man -- individual who has -- wants to have a real life, and who -- want to -- to find a -- lead a shadowy existence, must distinguish between measured days, which we call weekdays, and yardstick's days. I don't know what -- what -- you have a better expression for "yardstick days"? You know, Roosevelt called the electricity -- the -- the utilities, "We had" -- "We need a yardstick for their behavior." So I take it over from him, "yardstick." But what is something that sets a base, that gives a measure to other things?



(Pilot. Pilot.)


(Pilot. Pilot. P-i-l-o-t.)


The pilot?


P-i-l-o-t? It's so much -- I mean, not -- not -- it's a model, more than a pilot,

perhaps. -- You know why I'm reluctant? The word "pilot" always comes into my ears today with "pilot experiment." And -- the holiday is not an experiment, you see, because it's an experience. And I want to get out of this world of experimentation. -- I may be -- superstitious, but isn't it true that "pilot experiment" is a -- is a very trite word today?


And I don't -- would like to sever the connection, you see, with "experiment" in this -- in this context. Because you are already riddled with the wrong sense of experimentation. Life is God's experiment with us, yes; but not our experiment. We -- you cannot experiment with life. I warn you against this very heavily, gentlemen. -- Otherwise you will come to the -- to the insight at the end of your life that -- it's -- it's too late to really live, if you experiment with your life. With war and with marriage, no experimentation. That's final.

So -- the model -- the model time and the modeled time, or measured time relate to each other. And people in any civilization--which you call "civilization"--in any order live by a primary, original date, and the days that are then resplendent and reflecting the glory of this day. You would -- could say very easily of the Americans that the 4th of July is that day from which all other days of our existence deduce their law, their legality, you see. Take the e- -- equality with the motherland. Take the common law. Take the right of property. Everything is involved in the declaration of July 4th, when it was made clear who the United States people wanted to be. And the memory of this day is to -- to this day the basis of deducing every future law. It has to be reasoned in connection with this first principle, under which the storm broke, you see, by which the United States took their own course of action. And it's the only basis for agreement. If you can say that the 4th of July is no longer in any way model, and yardstick, and setting the pace and the meaning for the other days, we would certainly plunge into Communism, or anarchy, or something like that, because then you could defend any principle, you see, and say -- you can put this over. But there would then be a secession. And the Civil War of course is a good example of -- of the secession of the southern states, even after 70 years.

But to come back to the problem of establishing an era. The times which we can establish, gentlemen, are not eternal, and they are not of momentary nature. But they always comprise at least three generations. The Civil War is a good example of the collapse of the first American era, of 1783 or '89--Constitution--after 70 years. In 1860, the first era of the United States had to be refounded with blood, sweat, and tears because the South interpreted the era differently, and it was all over for the South, so to speak, at that moment.

So at least three generations, gentlemen, must share an era, if weekdays shall comply with the principle of the founding day or the original day, or the holy day, the festival day, festival. The festivity sets the measure, but it can only be, so to speak, worthwhile if there is some time created. Holidays create eras.

Now I have to say something about the word "era." Oh, heavens. I have overstepped my time considerably. So. I lived over the Civil War right away. Let me -- give me -- give me some -- more time. I hope I can keep you awake.

The era, gentlemen, the established time is distinguishable from ordinary moments by the fact that it creates an avenue of time through the ages, that this arcade, of which we spoke before, of the present era, the present epoch, is really to be counted quite ostensibly and quite visibly by decades, by a century. I would say that from human experience, the -- the epoch or the era, which is a minimum of fruition and usefulness is 120 years. You can see it in the French Revolution where the Bas- -- 14th of July created the French Republic, and it lasted to the Great War, in 1914. That's a time unit of 120 years. In this country, as I said, we had this tremendous revival, this regeneration in 1860 to 1865. But we are today in a very critical situation again. And so it's again 90 years of -- since the Civil War, is it not? And we are not yet over the hump. And we don't know when we will have the first king.

The republic or -- this country is on very, very, very weak foundations. You saw that Mr. Roo- -- Eisenhower tried to get 27 senators to visit him in Thomasville, and that Mr. Johnson had to remind him that the country still had the impression that Washington was the capital of the United States. That's a sign of the times, gentlemen, that the elect of the people already has some feelings that the country has to move around him. You will see more of this in the next 10 years. It's inevitable. Nobody's fault, gentlemen, by the way, but just -- you have abused a democracy to such an extent that now you have to have a strong, central power.

And -- so the era of the American -- I mean, {paradise} of democracy is certainly over. Whatever happens. That's over. You cannot have a Jeffersonian democracy, and you -- and then -- duplicate it by a General Motors democracy.

It is just impossible. I mean, I say this without any accusation. But I warn you that all good things, all the established eras have their time. That is no accusation against them. My life is limited, gentlemen. That -- doesn't mean that it isn't a good life. You see, it's no accusation against me that I have to die.

Therefore you must learn one thing, gentlemen. It is not an accusation against the time that it comes to an end. That's one of your superstitions, that

good times should never end. That's not true. Every epoch, because it is established by human effort, comes to an end. The colonial era was not bad. I think that Puritans did a very great thing here in this country. But it had to come to an end. In 1776, it was all over. It's a long story to tell why it had to end. But certainly not because the people from 1620 to 1776 didn't do their duty. They did it very much so that they fulfilled their time.

So the first thing is, gentlemen: eons or epochs are of a limited length. The time which men -- human beings experience are epochs of -- let us say, between 120 and 150 years' length. We can experience them as long as we are loyal to our ancestors, and loyal to our grandchildren. That is, man can experience them as a link in the chain of the generations. If he becomes the cog on the wheel, if he becomes a wage-earner, no era. His whole time collapses. There's no time sense. If -- as long as you have, however, such loyalties, you are able to establish a time period as an avenue through time from the founding day.

That's very important, gentlemen, because it shows you that also the Christian Church has to be refounded every 150 years. The -- it's very imposing today. We speak of the history of Christianity as though it wa- -- had lasted 1957 years. Don't be betrayed. The Christian Church had to be refounded by living souls every 120 years. Of course it had to be. There were first the Apostles. And then there were the bishops. And then there were the confessors. And then there were the hermits. And then there were the monks. And then there were the missionaries. And then there were the emperors. And then there were the kings. And then there were the popes. And then there were the Jesuits. And on it went. And -- the Franciscans and the Dominicans. And today -- then there was the Reformation. And then there were the Puritans. And then there were on -- the Calvinists. And then there were the foreign missions, and the evangelical movement. And if you don't get the refounding of the Church today, there will be no Christianity. That is, gentlemen, human -- it is the pride of Christianity that it has a history, and that it has epochs. Don't think that it would be a living thing if the Church was founded once forever. It has to be refounded in human hearts every 120 or 150 years. You will either have to refound it, or you will destroy it, with a religious--what do they call it now? "religious"--is it called "religious renaissance"?


Nothing of revival at all. I mean, that's just mechanics. That's not a refounding of the Church. That's the ecumenic movement. That may be, Sir. It could be. That's still possible.

So the honor of the times is that they are so frail that they can be de-

stroyed by our forgetfulness, gentlemen. Time is nothing outside you and me. And I want to drive home today only this, gentlemen: that my discovery, or your realization and the common knowledge of course of all people at all times--except in a time of scientific bunk--is that the times are frail, and that the continuity of our lives hangs on a very thin thread of loyalty, and obedience, and memory, and liturgy, and celebration. And if you want to forget, you can dismiss the whole times into the abyss of nothingness. Nihilism, gentlemen, is much easier than establishment. And we live today of course in a time of nihilism, in which the individual looks at the times and says, "Well, I will believe Christianity, if it has been always there." "The pope, that's quite impressive," for example, or "the Vatican," or so. Gentlemen, this man is an absolutely dead -- dead--how do you call such a man?--ja. He's a nuisance, because he thinks other people must connect the times. We must connect the times. We must live on this avenue through time. And we cannot live in eternal avenues. You can follow suit for the -- epoch that has gone by, or you can found the next epoch. But what -- human beings can found, even Jesus could not reach in His founding the Church over the destruction of Jerusalem. That's why He only imposed on the Apostles the waiting until Jerusalem would be destroyed. And then the Church was founded and went quite different ways from Jesus and the Apostles. The bishops came and took over their various congregations. And that was His ultimate wisdom, that He -- He has reached you and me by His tremendous humility of putting the refounding of the Church into the weakest hands of a traitor, like St. Peter. The runaway man, you see. That was the safest thing, because He took the measure of man and said, "If I can get this weakest man, the weakest link in the chain, then the chain will hold," you see. So He put with -- with Peter's, as you know, lie--that he didn't know the Lord--and said, "Never mind. That's just the right man. That's the average man. And I can found my -- my order on -- on the weak man much better than on the strong man."

This is important, gentlemen, for you and me. You always think that the calendar is something outside your doings. You leave this to {Mamut's} organization. I assure you, gentlemen, one man who has Easter in his heart can refound the Christian era, because he can organize time. He can subject the weekdays to the yardstick of the extraordinary event, by which all mankind was called under one leader. And of course, that takes time. Why should it not take 1957 years to bring humanity to its senses? That's not a very long time, gentlemen. And the or- -- marching orders of Christianity are the same, from the very beginning, that God created one man on this earth, and not many. And that's still waiting for your fulfillment, and it has to be done by -- getting groups after groups together for these intermediate calendars of epoch length. And we'll see that the real calendar is only composed out of the living bricks of these periods of 120 or 150 years.

Thank you.